Re: nnimap vs. nnmaildir

[Richard Riley]

Tassilo Horn <tassilo@member.fsf.org> writes:

> Dan Christensen <jdc@uwo.ca> writes:
>
> Hi Dan,
>
>> [nnimap or nnmaildir for synching imap]
>
> I use a local dovecot imap server that synchronizes several imap
> accounts using offlineimap.  From Gnus, I access it via nnimap.  This
> works very reliable for more than a year now.
>
> Before, I used offlineimap to populate maildirs and accessed those with
> the nnmaildir backend.  But that was very slow for big groups.
>
> The switch to a local dovecot imap server was quite easy.  To configure
> dovecot for my needs, there's no magic involved.  I can send you my
> configs to get you started.
>
>> Criteria that are important to me:
>>
>> - robustness
>
> Absolutely.
>
>> - speed (generating the summary buffer, selecting articles, moving
>>   articles between groups)
>
> Very fast, much faster than nnmaildir, at least for groups with a lot of
> articles.
>
>> - ability to edit articles
>
> Dunno 'bout that one...
>
>> - search
>
> Dovecot has several full text search plugins that speed up imap SEARCH
> commands.  For interfacing with it, I use nnir.  Setup is a one-liner
> for each account.
>
> Bye,
> Tassilo
>
>
>

Dovecot works great via nnimap.

I use mairix to keep a index on my mail server refreshed by a cron
job. The client mairix command is then simply "ssh servername mairix" to
populate my local gnus.

Over a year running like this and works brilliantly. The documentation for
mairix can confuse a little but do try it.